Background

The Country has had a mixed picture with regard to improving health for Kenyans. Life expectancy is low, with age – specific mortality levels remaining high. Communicable conditions, non-communicable conditions, and injuries are all major contributors to overall mortality. Some improvements are being noted in Child and Infant mortality, however. Numbers and coverage's with effective Health Service interventions have increased. Interventions addressing health risk factors have, however, not been implemented to impact positively on health. Financial resources have remained fairly stagnant, with a shift towards development partner financing, and relative reductions in out of pocket spending on health. 

The Health Sector anticipates that, in addition to the existing burden on communicable conditions, the country will face a significant increase in non-communicable conditions and injuries in the coming years, leading to a triple disease burden in the country. Over 360,000 persons will be dying annually by 2030, even with current health services trends that should yield reductions in deaths due to key communicable conditions such as HIV, and Malaria. 

Policy framework

To mitigate against this, drive the country health towards that of a middle income country as envisioned in the Vision 2030, and to ensure the Health Sector is able to contribute towards attainment of the right to health as envisioned in the Country's constitution, the health sector is putting in place a comprehensive, balanced, and coherent National Health Policy Framework. By comprehensive, the policy shall provide guidance across the health spectrum for actions required to attain the Country's overall health goals. In being balanced, it shall cover all aspects of interventions in health that are needed to achieve the health goals, giving appropriate weight to their importance. In being coherent, it shall ensure different policy directions are mutually exclusive, but all contributing to a common overarching agenda. 

The policy directions are in 3 areas: 

1. Policy goal – the overarching focus of the sector;
2. Policy objectives – the health outcomes that the sector will work towards attaining in order to achieve the policy goal; and
3. Policy orientations – how the sector will organize and manage itself to ensure delivery of interventions needed to attain the policy objectives.

For more on the Policy Document, Download Comprehensive National Health Policy Framework 2011-2030 document ( PDF, 555KB)

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